Do you think traffic is getting worse? For those of us that live on the Monterey Peninsula, we get flustered when southbound Highway 1 backs up on a weekend or "commute traffic" comes to a crawl heading out of Monterey. We may want to reconsider our plight if we compare our traffic to the Bay Area and other parts of the country...it looks like we're in pretty good shape.
Inrix, a research company focusing on transportation, ranked 100,000 traffic hotspots based on the cost of wasted time, lost fuel, and carbon emissions in the 25 most congested American cities.
The big winner for the worst traffic? Los Angeles, with 10,385 traffic hotspots. While that's fewer than second-place New York, which has 13,608 hotspots, Inrix found Los Angeles' traffic issues more severe than New York's based on the ranking criteria. As a result, Inrix projects that the cost of Los Angeles' congestion in 2026 will total $90.9 billion, while New York's congestion in 2026 projects to $63.9 billion.
The top five cities were filled out with Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; and Dallas.
Los Angeles had five of the ten worst traffic hotspots in the country, with Washington having three and Chicago and San Diego having one each. But Washington owns the nation's worst hotspot, I-95 south at Exit 133A for Fairfax County Parkway. Los Angeles captures the next three spots, with the fifth in Chicago on I-90 west from Exit 81A to Exit 56B.
Source: "INRIX Identifies the Worst Traffic Hotspots in the 25 Most Congested U.S. Cities," Inrix.com (Sept. 27, 2017)